Isaiah 26:19-21–Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by. For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.
There is a need for each believer to thank and praise the Father and to encourage one another with the truth that Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets did not have. With the vision of the destruction that God will someday bring on the entire earth and of Christ’s “reign as king on Mount Zion in Jerusalem” (24:23), Isaiah could only express praise for God’s faithfulness (25:1). He shared the profound truth: for true believers of all ages, the Lord will “destroy death forever” (25:8) and the “dead will live”(26:19).
Two mysteries have been revealed to the body of Christ, the church. The first is that “Gentiles are co-heirs” of God’s grace (Ephesians 3:6). The second mystery concerns the culmination of the church age. When this period ends, all true believers—both those who have died and those who are still alive—will be caught up to be with Christ forever. Paul wrote:
1 Corinthians 15:51-53–I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
As Paul concluded this paragraph, he referred to Isaiah’s prophecy:
- Why is it so important to understand the last days?
- What does “to be home with the Lord” mean to you?
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